Spring White Pearls (Organic)

What I really love about Davidstea organic tea is… The PURE TASTE.
And this tea is really what I talk about when I name “Quality”.

It has a bold floral spectrum along with the straight pleasant white tea taste.
You can infuse it 20 minutes long and it NEVER became bitter.

The fresh feeling of the young spring leaves is really refreshing.
And the smell? It’s like the taste.
It smell like fresh tea leaves without smelling like fish or sea water.

A perfect tea, nothing else. :)

Finally finished my bag of this and overall I’m not very impressed. Whether it is the tea or the fact that maybe I don’t like like white teas in general I don’t know.

I probably won’t stock up on this again, even if I don’t have anymore white tea in my cupboard. Its one of those “meh” teas for me. When I have more experience with white tea I will form a stronger opinion on this one.

1.25 tsp for 250 mL water @ 82C, steeped 3 minutes.

Buttered scallops.

Not for me.

Wow. I am definately surprised by this one! I received it as a gift, and is not something I would have picked out myself.

My only other experience with a straight white tea was many moons ago, when Salada tea bags were the only tea I knew. I walked into an Amour des thés shop, and was sold “a wonderful white tea!” with no futher info, even though I was obviously a newbie to loose leaf and quality teas. Result? I made a cup using boiling water, added milk and sugar (that is the only way I knew how to drink tea back then) and promptly gave the rest of the $20 bag away! (Yet another way in which I fully appreciate DT…)

Back to the tea!
First impressions – The dry leaf smells like a subdued gunpowder green tea. It brews to a pale golden color with a similar aroma. I definately agree with Tina S. = these are the most beautiful tea leaves that have unfurled in my cup. So delicate and fresh!

Flavour – Definately not the mild flavour I would expect. It’s like a wonderful Osprey Gunpowder that has mellowed out and had any trace of bitterness removed. Very light yet still a lasting flavour.

Lovability – Not the tea that I would run to, nor one that I would necessarily restock. But it is definately a pleasant and surprising tea that I am happy to have tried.

Day 29 of my 101 days of tea. Had this today (well, I suppose technically yesterday now) at the DAVIDsTEA on Queen Street West. Steeped for around 6 minutes.

I found the taste to be quite floral — more than I’d like, really. Perhaps someone who enjoyed that sort of taste might find this delightful, but it wasn’t quite my thing. It also seemed rather one-note-ish, perhaps because I’m used to flavoured whites and this was straight.

I resteeped it with a half-full cup (the DAVIDsTEA cups are pretty big, after all….), and found the taste to even perhaps get stronger than the first time around. So, still didn’t like it, but was glad to see that the flavour was quite persistant at least.

Not my favourite tea, probably wouldn’t buy more of it (especially at $20/50g). However, it’s my first straight white tea of this challenge, so I’m glad I gave it a try.

I’m not a straight white tea lover so I was hesitant when I got this one to try, especially at the price! I used one of the “perfect teaspoon” scoops and wow, what seems like so little dry exploded into these beautiful leaves when they unfurled in brewing. They’re clearly so fresh and new and are the most beautiful brewed leaves I think I’ve seen in a tea. I can’t seem to stop running my fingers through them, as weird as that seems.

The tea itself brews to a very nice flavour, not overly strong with no trace of bitterness. The brew is golden in colour and I found that just a half teaspoon of sugar brought out all of the undernotes to make it a delightful cup. I was definitely pleasantly surprised by this one!

A very light floral smelling tea, like a green tea but more fresh?

My favourite part of it all was the brewing experience. I watched the tea leaves unfurl, they turned out to be light green in colour. Don’t know if it’s even possible to describe tea but I thought the leaves were cute. :P

The tea itself was a pale yellow. Taste wise, it’s good not bitter. I rarely drink white teas so I am not an expert at what is a good white tea.

Not planning on restocking but I did enjoy the cup.

Oh man, yesterday started off so stressful that I completely forgot I drank an entire pot of this. Still a favourite of mine – I just can’t get over how delicious and intense the honey notes are.

I feel so lucky that I was able to get a good amount of this in a swap, but after brewing up a whole pot, I’m starting to turn a hoarding eye at this again. Even though I should not hoard teas, because I have way too much tea right now. But it’s so tasty and I will be sad when it’s gone for good.

I’ve experimented with this tea to find out where its best flavour is and I think I’ve found why there are so many varying reviews on it. This is a very delicate tea and it must be treated as thus. If the temperature, handling, and/or timing is off, the flavour is too potent with a buttery, sea-like flavour. When brewed properly, this is quite possibly the loveliest tea I’ve tasted. It’s very delicate, floral, and refreshing. As a result, I thought I would share my experiences with some insight as to what it is that probably shouldn’t be done with this tea.

The wrong ways to brew this tea

Hot:
#1. The first time I tried it. I didn’t like it at all. The only temperature our kettle at work has is boiling and that was what I used. I used the minimum 2 minutes to steep and discovered that I almost couldn’t stand this tea. As someone else mentioned, ‘buttered scallops,’ I wound up with something I felt was more akin to buttered seaweed because to think of scallops would have made my stomach turn. It was potent, heavily buttered, with a bitter aftertaste that left a strange coating on my tongue. Yuck!

Cold:
#2. Determined to like this tea for what I paid for it and because I bought a lot of it on faith, I decided my next step would be a cold brew. In my overzealous frenzy and impatience, I thought that a good ‘shaken’ cold brew would work best to bring out the flavour and to help it brew faster. I shook it vigorously to bring out all the ‘good-for-you goodness’ and then left it for 4.5 hours in the fridge. That was a mistake. The liquid was foggy and the flavour was but-ter-y… Maybe some sweetener would do the trick. We were out of stevia so I used just the smallest splash of honey. It made it more palatable, but it led me to believe that honey was too heavy for a white tea.

#3. I thought if I boiled hot water and then poured it over the leaves before cold brewing, it would tone it down a bit. That was when I finally realized it was seaweed I was smelling. Wow. Did it ever smell like seaweed when I was pouring that hot water over it. Interesting. With a shrug, I put it in the fridge and cold-brewed it for 6 hours, brought it to work with a few packets of stevia and had my co-worker sample it with me. It was better this time, but I thought it could be better still. The buttery flavour was nowhere to be found and it tasted a little bit more like a green tea, along with its subtle pungency. I’m not really a big fan of green tea.

So, we brainstormed together and she said to leave it alone. “Just cold-brew the dang thing and put it in the fridge overnight so that we can have some in the morning…! Oh! And bring a lemon!” She’s always yelling at me. I thought the idea was crazy. Overnight seemed like a bit of a long stretch to me, but I’m always up for an experiment. As a result, I went home and decided to try the tea hot again. Only this time I would do it correctly. Don’t worry, I did the cold brew too.

The right ways to brew this tea

Hot:
#1. Definitely follow instructions for this tea. The temperature is the most important factor. I have a variable kettle so I set it to White Tea and put only 1 tsp of the leaves in my cup. Yeah, I’ll admit it, I was a little afraid of this tea by that time. I just didn’t want to give up. I brewed it for 1.5 minutes and took my first sip. Damn, this tea is good! I never would have guessed it could be so pungent if it weren’t for my first mistakes. The flavour was light and floral. The aroma was delicate, and the liquor was beautiful and clear.

Cold:
#2. I put 2 tsp into my cup-sized French press and poured cold water over it, put it in the fridge and left it for 11 hours. When I walked into work, I put it on my co-worker’s desk, ran upstairs, grabbed my cute little cups, and a packet of stevia. I also grabbed the slices of lemon I prepared the night before. By the time I returned, she had already pressed it. She has no patience. We tried the first sip plain. I was surprised by the light flavour and the cool aroma. It really didn’t need anything else in it. There was no bitterness or buttery note. The second sip was with stevia. It was still good, more of a spring/summer drink. We added the lemon for the third sip and discovered a whole new flavour. This was an amazing summer ‘patio’ drink. The notes of the white tea persisted with a beautiful fresh lemon accent in it. The stevia just stirred things together. Though, I’m not entirely convinced that this tea needs any stevia at all.

Conclusion
Be very careful with how you brew this tea if you want to enjoy it. It could mean a world of difference.

Very nice white tea.